Udruga za razvoj audio-vizualne umjetnosti
10/12 2021
Metamedia Association invites all those interested to apply for the “Remix Identity 7” music remixing competition. The theme of the competition is the intersection of the two-part singing in narrow intervals of Istria with electromagnetic sounds. All those works that experimentally reinterpret traditional music are welcome to participate in the competition. Through the process of remixing a traditional song, we will try to put it in a relationship with technology in order to bring them closer to a wider audience, especially young people, and emphasize creativity in the context of interpreting traditional music in this area. In this union, the new elevates the old, and the old still lives in the new. The new thus represents the redemption of the old on which it is based.
An expert jury consisting of Milan Đurić, Noel Šuran, and Tin Dožić will select two best works, the first of which will receive a cash prize of 1,000 HRK, and the second in the amount of 500 HRK. A wider selection of the best works will be released on a joint album. The competition is open to all, and the only condition is the use of samples created in the previous Remix of Identity workshops, which will be sent by e-mail after applying for participation. Those interested can apply to participate in the competition via the online form. Applications should be sent to the e-mail address kontakt.radionice@gmail.com with the note “Remiks identiteta 7 – prijava na natjecaj” by December 23, 2021. To send large files you need to use some of the services such as WeTransfer or Jumbo mail.
About remixing materials
1. Narrow intervals
Traditional Istrian music, kanat, tarankanje, bugarenje and descant two-part polyphony, with a common denominator – the style of narrow intervals – are part of live music practice, and many residents consider it a valuable cultural expression and important part of identity.
140BPM – Cviće mi polje pokrilo
text: trad.
melody: trad.
Performers: Šuran & Milotić
An example of an old song performed in the kanat style. The movement of shares is in comparative narrow (untempered) thirds with occasional unions. The cadence is always in unison. This song is one of the most popular and very widespread throughout Istria. A gramophone record of the same name was recorded in the 1980s by Jugoton. Later, in the 1990s, an audio cassette with a book by editor Renato Pernić. Also, under the same name, a popular radio show was realized, which affirmed the traditional music of Istria.
150BPM – Oj javore
text: trad.
melody: trad.
performers: Šuran & Milotić
An example of an old song from central Istria that has been torn away from oblivion in this way. This tune was sung by Šuran’s great-grandfather with his company.
113 BPM – Šoferska je tuga pregolema
text: Milanče Radosavljević
melody: Alfo Konović
performers: Šuran & Milotić
A very popular song in the former Yugoslavia. This is a performance in the style of tight intervals as sung by some traditional singers. Traditional singer Milena Bile sang to this tune with her brother-in-law. However, they performed the tune ”on thin and thick”. When a man and a woman sing, the lower section moves an octave higher by a sext above the leading voice, so the cadence is in the octave.
150BPM_second – Dođi k meni draga
text: Milan & Anđelo Milotić
melody: Milan & Anđelo Milotić
performers: Šuran & Milotić
An example of a traditional song performed together by brothers Milan and Anđelo Milotić. Here, too, it is a song they invented, and it was composed around the late 1960s. In the folklore milieu, the prevailing view is that the authors of traditional songs are unknown and anonymous, however, this is not entirely true. Dr. Ive Rudan points out that in the wider public, and even within the science, the question was not asked, who is the creator of a folk song, but it was important who and how performs the song or concert. Due to such occasions in which the attention was mainly focused on the success of the performance, the issue of creating, designing songs, i.e. melodies remained completely neglected. Efforts were made to mystify folk songs and give them an older age than they actually were. A poem unknown to the author was considered more archaic and therefore more valuable.
144BPM – Moja vitura
text (beside): Milan Milotić
melody (vers): Noel Šuran
Performers (kantaduri): Noel Šuran & Milan Milotić
This is an example of a newer song performed in the kanat style. The movement of shares is in comparative narrow (untempered) thirds with occasional unions. The cadence is always in unison. Istrian kanats are certainly an example of an archaic musical language (first tradition). However, most of the songs of Istrian kanats that are in use today are of more recent date (newer heritage of the first tradition). Here, I will try to explain the seemingly paradoxical situation by comparing it with Latin. For example, Latin is an old language, but if we adopt it (alphabet, grammar, syntax) we could use it to write a contemporary song or story. A song or story would be contemporary and the language archaic. So it is with most of today’s Istrian kanats.
Milan Milotić is a famous Istrian traditional singer of the older generation. In his youth, he often sang with his brothers, mostly with his brother Anđelo. He later joined the Pula FD “Mate Balota”. Lately, he has mostly performed with Petar Brgić, with whom he founded the group “Paljarica”. In 2014, they released their own record on the Istrian land. All texts on the sound carrier are copyrighted and signed by Milan Milotić and Petar Brgić. In his poems, Milotić describes current social events, the festival of traditional customs, etc. Also, his poems exude strong nostalgia and idealization of past times and emphasized stereotypical symbols of Istrian identity.
2. Electromagnetic sounds
Our environment is full of electronic devices that emit electromagnetic emissions and thus create an invisible space of electric potentials. We view this space as an electric wilderness. Sounding and recording electromagnetic radiation creates sound textures and noises, noise, glitches, and errors that can function as experimental layers for musical and sound compositions. The samples were created at the Remix of Identity workshops led by Tin Dožić.
Remix of Identity is a music project of the Metamedij association implemented within the Metamedia Lab and the Metamusic music community studio – creative laboratories of the Rojc Social Center, whose purpose is to provide local artists with conditions for music production. The project seeks to establish a dialogue between traditional and contemporary music, and explores the possibilities of communication between societies, cultures, traditions, historical periods, and directions through contemporary music, remixing traditional music with contemporary. All previous editions of Identity Remix are available at: https://metamusicproduction.bandcamp.com/
BIOGRAPHIES
Milan Đurić, a graduate ethnologist-anthropologist, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and DJ, was born in 1979 in Belgrade. He is the founder and member of the group “ShazaLaKazoo”, as well as the solo project “Some”. He is the author or co-author of more than two hundred protected compositions and in twenty-five years of his musical career, he has performed in forty countries on four continents.
dr.sc. Noel Šuran was born in 1986 in Pula. He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka. Ph.D. at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology in Zagreb. He works as a teacher of art culture. He is a member of the Croatian Ethnological Society, the Croatian Society of Composers, and the Croatian Society of Fine Artists of Istria. He has been involved in Istrian traditional music for many years. He has participated in many events, meetings, professional and scientific conferences, symposia, exhibitions, festivals, memorials related to the presentation and education of traditional music. He is the winner of many awards and recognitions.
Tin Dožić The practice of Tin Dožić (Rijeka, 1989) has moved away from primarily sound works towards multimedia, focusing on media research. He turned his practice from developing his own electronic instruments, appropriating outdated technologies, and recycling to media research. He is currently interested in materiality, (dark) ecology, DIY culture and media archeology, Anthropocene and geology, meeting points of art and science, and walking, sleeping, and dreams. He is looking for strange situations that naturally occur at the intersection of the physical and the digital. He has exhibited on various platforms in Croatia and abroad, through independent and collaborative projects. Dožić’s work Song for the Anthropocene won the Golden Watermelon Award at the Media Mediterranea Festival in 2018. He is a finalist of the Radoslav Putar Award 2019 and an alumnus of the WHW Academy in the 2019/2020 generation. As a member of the author team: Sven Sorić (visual identity), Hrvoje Spudić (visual identity), Sara Salamon (video animation), and Tin Dožić (sound design) won the Award of the 55th Zagreb Salon of Applied Arts and Design (2020) for young authors up to 35 years for visual identity for the 30th MBZ: Zagreb Music Biennale.